Science experiment Archives - Page 13 of 14

{Science for Children} Falling Chickens

May 30, 2013 By Deirdre

I was totally going to share another book with you, but then JDaniel came up with a wonderful science experiment he had to show me and I came across the book Letting Go (The Loopy Coop Hens) The Loopy Coop Hens: Letting Go fit perfectly with JDaniel’s experiment and lead to me designing this science for children activity I am calling falling chickens.

The hens in the book believe that there is a fox throwing apples from a tree at them. They ask him to stop but, the apples keep falling. They ask a rooster to threaten the fox and the apples keep falling. One of the hens climbs a ladder to see the fox and finds that there isn’t a fox in the tree. What she and later the other hens do see is a beautiful view and apples just letting go. By the end of the book, the hens are jumping out of the tree themselves to see what letting go is like. They get bumps and bruises, but they love letting go of their fears and of the tree.

What did we do to explore the book?
JDaniel and I were working on a science experiment with a cupcake liner just beneath our hall stairs. He jumped up and suggested we try dropping the stairs to see how they would land. JDaniel dropped the liner bottom down and landed bottom down. He tried dropping the liner sideways and upside down and it always landed bottom down.The next day we came across the book The Loopy Coop Hens- Letting Go at the library and I decided they would go well with the science experiment. Falling chickens seemed like a great science for children.

I made some cuts in a couple of cupcake liners to make them look like chickens. The cupcake liner chickens were also given a comb and colored beak. We wondered if these altered cupcake liners would land the same way the original liners had.

We took the cupcake liner flying chickens to the stair and let them drop. Each hen floated quickly to the ground.

JDaniel tried dropping them face up, face down, and sideways as he had before. Each falling chicken landed face up sitting as proudly as if they had flown down all by themselves.

A wonderful discussion on gravity and air flow followed. Sometimes you plan activities and sometimes play and learning just happens.How did you explore books this week? If you have a post you would like to share, please link it up below. Once you have added your post, please visit at least three others.

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100 Days of Play : Party Blower Frog Catching Game

May 2, 2013 By Deirdre

Watching frogs stretch out their tongues to reach out and grab a passing fly is fascinating. We have really only seen it shown in slow motion in an animal documentary at my house. It was so cool to see that the frog’s tongue is able to keep the fly attached to it as the frog drew it in to enjoy. Trying to catch flies with a party blower in a frog catching game may be the closest thing we have to experience the thrill the frog has as he gathers his lunch.

How did we put together this frog catching game?

Flies were printed off the internet and cut out. We used construction paper because it is heavy enough to support a Velcro spot and light enough to be lifted off the kitchen table by the party blower frog tongue.

We took round sticky backed Velcro spots and put the side that has the hook on it on to the end of party blowers facing down.

Then we took round sticky backed Velcro spots with loops and placed them on the flies.

Directions for

We found that it is easiest to blow the party blower horizontal to the table. There are many other ways to try. You could try to blow the party blower straight down. You may try to blow the blower at an angle down onto the fly. You may come up with a way that we didn’t even think off.

Hints:
The technique you choose may depend on the height of the person blowing, the height of the table and the length of the blower. It really was fun to try several different ways to connect the blower with the fly.

If you blow your blower to hard, the breeze coming from the blower can send the flies skidding across the table.

Once you find the technique that works for you, you may want to see how fast you can capture the group of flies on the table. We found that some flies cooperated in being a part of the party blower frog catching game and others frustrated us.

This post was part of the 100 Days of Play Blog Hop hosted by Life at the Zoo, it combines 100 blogs from around the world and 100 days to showcase simple ways to play.

100 Days of Play Blog Hop

Sharing simple ideas on how to connect with your children through play!

New ideas shared each day from 4/1 – 7/20.

Nature for Kids – Observing Spring with Your Senses

April 17, 2013 By Deirdre

Just before the pollen took hold of our region of the United States JDaniel and I explored the nature trail in his Nana’s retirement community. It was such fun to take in all the spring had on display on that pretty trail for us to view and take in. We decided to make this a nature for kids learning activity by looks for signs of spring we could smell, see and touch.

One of JDaniel’s favorite parts of the trail is the swings that are scattered up and down it. As he sat of the swing and I pushed him from behind, I thought about how we could use four out of our five senses to observe spring.

Hearing Sounds of Spring

He could sit for hours and listen to the sounds of the spring. There are the calls that come from birds in the lush trees. There is the rippling of the water feature that was right across from this swing. There was the movement of the tree branches as a slight breeze went by. There was also the squeak that came from the swing as I pushed it. It almost said spring as it moved back and forth.

Smells of Spring

The tree blossoms weren’t in full bloom , but we could smell the initial perfume that they put out. The new green leaves also gave off a fresh scent. There was also a slightly damp smell coming of the swing. Spring is filled with some many different smells.

Seeing Spring

JDaniel couldn’t slow down once he got off the swing. He was all over the trail looking at all the plants and trees. There were so many different shades of green and brown to observe. There were early spring plants that were festive and dressed up for Easter. Some plants were still dormant and hadn’t realized winter had passed and spring had arrived. Others were just starting to show their spring displays.

Thankfully each plant had a sign in front of it. JDaniel kept asking me what each plant was.

Touching Spring

JDaniel had the best time showing me each of the treasures and describing what it felt like. Some were soft and smooth while others were hard and bumpy. There were seed pods, pine cones, leaves, small twigs and so much more.

There were some many treasures that plants had deposited on the ground for JDaniel to find. By the end of the trail I wished that I had brought a paper bag with me to hold all of them. Since I didn’t, I asked JDaniel to find special places to hide them on the trail for others to find.

I hope you will each be able to head and out observe spring. It has so many things for us to see, hear, touch, and smell. This nature for kids activity is one your kids will ask to do again and again.

Here are some more nature for kids activities:

Backyard Nature Table

Do You See Animals When You Hike?

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity Round Up

March 16, 2013 By Deirdre

Whether you are looking for a St. Patrick’s Day craft, game or learning activity, I think you will find a wide variety to choose from in this post. There are 15 different activities that come from nine different blog posts displayed in the collage. We had a wonderful time creating, learning and experimenting to create this posts. I hope you will too.

St. Patrick’s Day Activity Collection

The counting objects in books activity, hair gel letter practice bag and the paper plate emotions spinner. ( He is the third activity in the third row) All came from a post called St. Patrick’s Day Activities: Part One.

The three sensory activities at the end of the first row all came from a post called St. Patrick’s day: Part Two. We had the best time digging for shamrocks and stone potatoes in the the third activity in that row. Then we made a thatched roof house out of play dough and straws. Finally we transferred sticks using chopsticks.

The first three activities in the second row come from a post called Science for Kids- Experiments with Green. We painted with a magnet and a paperclip, painted with homemade chalk paint and made a borax shamrock.

The fourth activity in the second row is a watercolor rainbow my son painted to go along with a St. Patrick’s Day story I wrote. The post was called. Walking on Watery Way Toward Treasure.

The last activity in the second row is one my son and I did at the grocery store. I called the post Seeing Green at the Grocery Store. We had the best time looking for green foods that match the paint chip we brought with us.

We dyed carnations green and orange to match the colors of the Irish Flag in a post called St. Patrick’s Day- Read.Explore.Learn. You will see the fun vases we used in the first picture in the third row.

The goat puppet was made for a post called {An Irish Tale} King Puck- Read.Explore.Learn. King Puck is a festival in Ireland. During the festival a goat is selected to be the king for the year.

Creating a trap for the leprechaun was a blast. My son loved creating pulley and decorating an old clementine box.

Painting with ice cubes was an adventure that I shared in a post called Coloring for Kids: Ice Cube Rainbow Painting.

If you are looking for a special St. Patrick’s Day snack or lunch, I shared a post called 8 St. Patrick’s Day Snack and Lunches. I hope you will check them out.

Quest to Trap the Leprechaun in a Homemade Trap

March 13, 2013 By Deirdre

how to make a leprechaun trap with trap ideas

We have been talking about leprechaun at our house for years, but we have never tried to trap the leprechaun that keeps coming up in the stories I tell JDaniel. That is until this year. This year we created a leprechaun trap to see if there might really be one in our town.

Steps We Took to Build Our Leprechaun Trap

Quest to Trap the Leprechaun in a Homemade Trap

We dug through our recycling bin to find the perfect box to use for the trap and came upon an old clementine orange crate. It was just the perfect size for the trap and it had holes in the bottom that we could use to create a trap for the leprechaun.

We covered the top and sides of the box with green, brown, and tan shamrocks. I thought it would be fun to give the box a camouflage look. After all we were trying to camouflage the trap from the leprechaun.

Then we created a trap using a pulley with an applesauce cup attached to it. The pulley was made of a piece of yarn wrapped attached to an old spool. The other end of the string was placed through one of the holes in the back of the crate. The old spool was slipped onto a straw that had a pipe cleaner wrapped around it. The straw with pipe cleaner was placed through holes in the back of the crate. The ends of the pipe cleaner were used to secure the straw in place by spreading them out.

The end of the string behind the crate was pulled up slowly to raise the cup and then the end of the string was tucked underneath the crate. JDaniel put in some items he thinks are treasures to test it out.After a few attempts at raising the string, we added pipe cleaner segments to the ends of the spool to keep the string from coming off the spool and tangling on the straw.

Then we painted the box. We should have painted the box before we did the pulley tests, but we did it afterwards. We did remove the pulley system before we painted the inside of the box. The box was painted completely green on the inside. I thought it would be pretty.

The only real problem with the leprechaun trap is that there won’t be someone around to pull the leprechaun up in the middle of the night. Well, there might be. Dad may be up to have his midnight snack. JDaniel drew him an illustration of how the trap works. You will notice the leprechaun approaching the trap at the bottom of the page. I am to write out directions on how the trap work so my husband will know what to do.

The leprechaun trap won’t be tested out until St. Patrick’s Day. I have heard that is when leprechauns are most active. We will just have to wait and see. If we do catch one or temporarily trap one, I sure hope he leaves JDaniel a treat.

I promise to post how our leprechaun trap works out on our Facebook page on Sunday. I hope I will have little man to share with you.

Here are some of the stories we have told about leprechaun. JDaniel told me a few years ago that I ran over one in my car. I shared that adventure in a post called I Did Not Kill a Leprechaun. To this day I stand by my innocence. The thud JDaniel heard under my care was not a leprechaun.This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.

Coloring for Kids – Ice Cube Rainbow Painting

February 27, 2013 By Deirdre

Coloring with dyed ice cubes in a roasting pan is a great way to work on blending colors and experimenting with them. Ice cube rainbow painting is an activity that does just that. This idea popped into my head last week and I really wanted to try it.

Sometimes when you get a great idea like ice cube rainbow painting, turns out better than you imagined. Other times you try it out and it just doesn’t work. I mean it turns into an outrageous mess.

The kind of mess that stays with you all day. I have made colored ice cubes before and haven’t had it be a huge mess, but this time it really didn’t work well.

Why Color for Kids with Ice Cubes was Messy?

The ice cubes started to melt as soon as they came out of the freezer. (I think our 18-year-old freezer is having issues and that might be part of the problem.) I barely had them in this roasting pan when I took the picture above. You can see the colors smearing all over the pan. When I tried to move the blue cubes, a small blue stream started to form. I decided to not touch them again and take a picture of the cubes right where they were.The ice cubes really should have been moved with tongs or a spoon. Instead, I used my hands. You can’t begin to imagine what they looked like by the time I was finished. Each of the colors above covered my hands from the tip of my fingers to the base of my palm. My hands were scrubbed and rubbed with soap and a special hand cleaner my husband keeps in the garage and they were still rainbow bright.My idea was to take them out to take a picture and put them back in the freezer for JDaniel to play with when he came home from preschool. The ice cubes seemed to get smaller and smaller as they sat in the pan. I decided not to bother with trying to put them back in the ice cube trays. This idea would need to be retried with new ice cubes.

So, I cleaned up the outrageous mess created by pools of color ice cubes and headed to school to pick JDaniel up. As soon as a walked in the door of this classroom, he asked about what I had done to my hands. “They are so colorful!” he said.I told him it was a coloring for kids experiment that didn’t go well and I would need his help to try it again. He liked hearing that he was needed to help.

We will do this coloring for kids experiment again! It really is a great idea! This time maybe it won’t be an outrageous mess. This time it will be a solidly froze idea that melts elegantly into pools of color. Coloring ice cubes for my kid and having them ice cube rainbow paint really will be fun! ( Cross your fingers and say a prayer!)

This post links to Alphabe Thursday.

Science for Kids- Experiments with Green

February 19, 2013 By Deirdre

I was contacted to try some science for kids experiments by TndrBox late last year. JDaniel loves to do science experiment especially ones that have chemical reactions so, I agreed to look over one of their monthly kits. We got the kit quickly and would have done five of the science experiments that came with it if JDaniel had gotten his way.

We did do all of them in just two days. I would read him what science concepts would be learning from the booklet I got from TndrBox along with the directions and he was able to do most of the experiments on his own. Many of the experiments we conducted were at night and the pictures I took didn’t come out well. We redid some of them so I could take pictures. Most came out with the same result and some came out better. I am glad we repeated these science for kids experiments.

Here are our science for kids experiments:

Growing Crystals

The first experiment that we did involved growing crystals with Borax. I must have misread the directions because we didn’t end up with a lot of crystals. I decided we need to retry the experiment last week after I watch the video on the TndrBox site and it came out perfectly. The crystal appeared less than 24 hours after we mixed the Borax with water.

Chalk Painting

TndrBox called this experiment DIY Paint. It was such fun for JDaniel to make. He got to smash a piece of chalk and then follow the rest of the directions to create paint with it. Smashing the chalk was so exciting for him. I don’t often let him hold a hammer. We talked about how we were working with binding the chalk to the water to create paint, but I think JDaniel was more focused on the paint creation.Magnet and Paperclip Painting

The directions said to place blobs of paint on a paper plate along with a paperclip. Beneath the plate you were to move a magnet. As you moved the magnet, the paper clip would move through the paint and create a design. If you moved the paperclip long enough the blobs of paint would smear together.

JDaniel took a couple of minutes to get the hang of it, but once he got the paperclip moving he had a great time.

We also performed experiments that involved creating slime, and make a balloon centrifuge. I love getting to do these experiments with JDaniel and having almost everything we needed come in a kit made it so much easier for me.

Disclaimer: I was sent a monthly science for kids kit for review. My thoughts and opinions about it are my own. When original experiments were done the pictures were too dark to share here. We redid them using green as the theme one morning when the light was better.

Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin for Kids

February 11, 2013 By Deirdre

A Valentine’s Day sensory bin is a great time to explore and play with symbols of the holiday as well as fun red objects. I recently share the bin above with JDaniel and he had a great time exploring, learning with and, playing with its contents.

What did I put in it?

Valentine’s Day themed stencil
Heart shaped cookie cutters
Heart shaped doilies
Heart shaped sunglasses
Red funnels
Red and pink buttons
Ribbon
Heart shaped Straw
Heart shaped skewers
Red beans
Dice with hearts on them
Pink Spoon

While children just love to explore and create their own activities with sensory bins, I like to guide JDaniel just a little bit. After he had checked everything out and played with it for awhile, I suggested we try the activities below.

Sunglass Weaving

He simply wove a couple of strand of ribbon through the slats in the sunglasses. It was a great small motor skill and in took some concentration to do. He couldn’t see through them when he was done, but it was a fun activity.

Estimating Beans

How many beans did JDaniel think would fit into each cookie cutter? Did the same number of beans fill the large cookie cutter as they did the small one? In this case the large one did not get filled up by the same number of beans. It didn’t even fill one layer of beans.

Heart Skewer Shuffleboard

The heart shaped skewers made perfect shuffle board sticks. I had JDaniel test out whether the bean or the button made it farther when it was shuffled across the kitchen table. I think he added a little more force behind the that he wanted to win. He had picked the bean. Either way it was a fun activity.

Straw Blowing Activity

JDaniel also worked on blowing a button and a bean across the table with a straw. The skewers were much easier to use to get the bean and button moving. It took a lot of blowing to get the button across the table.

Funneling Buttons

Which buttons could be sent through the small funnel? Which ones went through the larger one? Really on the smallest buttons made it through the funnels. A few of the buttons got struck and we had to use the skewer to pop them back up through the top.

Slinky Measurements

JDaniel has the most fun with this plastic heart shaped slinky. He loved trying to get it to flop and and spring back up. I had him place it on the end of the sensory bin and count how many hearts across the bin was. That got him thinking about other things he could measure the length of. He ended up measuring chair, tables and even his bear. They were accurate measurements due to the fact that the slinky had to be stretched out to measure the length of some things, but it was great counting practice.

As I mentioned a sensory bin is mostly for exploring, but I did want to share with you six activities we did with the contents of this bin.

Science Activity for Kids – Magnetic Heart Jar

February 6, 2013 By Deirdre

Love like magnets can repel or attract. JDaniel is too young at almost five to understand much about how there are some people that we are attracted to and some people seem to repel us or cause us to pull away from them. He has started to understand that there are some things that magnets are attracted to and some that don’t react at all to them. I put together a science activity for kids that I am calling Love is Magnetic and looks at how magnets work together with things that they are attracted to.

Creating This Science Activity for Kids

We created a magnetic heart jar filled with things that magnets are attracted to using the following materials:

red, pink and white pipecleaners
empty peanut jar
paperclips bent into hearts
ball magnets

How did we put the magnetic heart jar together:

I cut the pipe cleaners into thirds and we bent them into heart shapes.

We put all the pipe cleaner hearts and paperclip hearts into the jar

We screwed on the lid.

Once the lid was screwed on, the fun began. JDaniel rolled a magnetic ball that we found in a drawer up and down the jar to see how many items he could lift up. Then he tried rolling the ball around the jar to see how many objects would follow the magnet all the way around the jar.

At first many of the objects clumped together in a bunch. JDaniel has to work carefully to try to just have a few objects follow where ever he lead them with the magnet. The more he practiced the more control he had over them.

It was really fun to watch the hearts dancing around in the jar. The sparkly pipe cleaner stars in particular look pretty flashing around in the jar on the bright afternoon we tried this jar out.

We will be taking the magnetic heart jar out again soon. I think we will add in some Valentine’s Day related hearts that do not contain metal and see how they interact with the magnet. They may not be attracted to it, but that may get stuck under an object that is and end up following the magnet around.

This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday!

Preschool Activity- Snowstorm in a Bag

January 15, 2013 By Deirdre

When you truly want snow and it just doesn't seem to fall you can make a snowstorm in a bag.

I mentioned yesterday that JDaniel really has wanted snow to fall here. He was blessed to have snow fall at Christmas time two years ago and again the following spring for this birthday. We haven’t had snow since then. While my sister in New York has snow at least half the year, we tend to get rain.We can’t seem to get snow outside, but I decided we could create a snowstorm in a bag. I traced a snowman onto a large plastic storage bag using a clip art snowman I found online.

Then JDaniel helped me gather materials he thought would make good snow. We ended up with tiny pieces of a foam sheet, paper towel, napkin, tissue and some felt. After weighing them each in his hand, he declared that the napkin was probably the lightest. I thought it would a good idea to try a few pieces of the other materials to see if they moved around in the plastic storage bag.

Once all the little pieces were in the bag, I showed JDaniel how to close all but a tiny area of the bag. He inserted a drinking straw into the bag to begin blowing the pieces. The blowing pieces in the bag would be our snowstorm.

The piece blew around a little when the bag was held up right. The snowman ended up getting a swirling snow body. The bag ended up with a lot of condensation and very puffy after only a few blows. Unlike a real snowstorm the wind in the bag was warm and left a hazy residue on the bag. The small pieces of tissue and napkin were damp. They started to stick to the inside of the bag.

After talking over what could be done to make the white pieces fly more and stick less, JDaniel decided we needed to place the bag on the table and try blowing into the bag while it was flat .

The pieces of white materials flew around so much better with the bag on the table. JDaniel was thrilled. The bag still filled with air and some of the pieces stuck, but the activity worked well this way.

Snowstorm in a Bag Update!

We are still crossing our fingers for snow this year! Since we haven’t had any fall yet, we made a snowstorm in a bag just as we did when JDaniel was little. I thought you might like to see what the new bag looked like.

Taking time to play and do a science experiment was such fun. We both really enjoy this preschool activity.

I called it a preschool activity, but I bet older children would enjoy it too. Making a snowstorm in a bag isn’t the same as having real snow! Maybe we will still have some if not I will be pulling this bag out and we will play and explore it again.